The best English phrase that comes close to this is, "I wasn't born yesterday." The Sri Lankan version is much richer in history and imagery (of course). I'm not the expert on such things, but the phrase has to do with the fact that in ancient times, South East Asian sailors, apparently long-haired, visiting Sri Lanka for trade, may have been considered easy targets for confidence tricks.
The direct translation is, "we're not pigtailed Chinamen!"
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Two 21 year olds
I started this post some months back when we had an intern with us from the U.S. He'd just graduated from Stanford, with an International Relations major if I remember right. We did several visits around the country as part of the work we wanted him to do for us. Accompanying us was my loyal "Golaya" in Sinhala, which can mean Man Friday, disciple, side-kick. Officially, Aide to Managing Director.
They were both 21 years old. One, whose parents were from Nigeria, had been born in the U.S., gone to Stanford, and was now laying the ground for Ph.D. work. The other, born in a very rural part of Sri Lanka, had studied well enough to win a scholarship at 11 years to my Alma Mater, Royal College. He has lived with his aunt in Colombo longer than he has lived with his own parents, so he could come to school. He is the eldest of three children, but as with most young men that age, in many ways he was still a child himself.
How did I find him? The old network, of course - luckily for him at age 11 he plugged in to one of the best networks you could find in Sri Lanka, no hubris and no exaggeration there. I needed a good, able dogsbody able to take some of the killer workload par for the course with social entrepreneurship. My old Scout Master knew just the man, a Prefect who was very into agriculture, perfect as I'm working in agriculture myself.
So much into agriculture in fact, that he'd cheerfully crashed his Advanced Levels (entrance exam for state universities) the first time, then started what was supposed to be part-time job at a leading agribusiness conglomerate that worked him so hard he crashed his second shy, and was just finishing his third and last shot at possibly his only way to get a higher education, given his economic condition. Get the marks, get a shot at university. In any year only 8.5% of those who pass the exams, get a score high enough to actually gain a seat at a state university.
Eight and a half percent. That leaves around 185,000 young men and women who passed the university exam, unable to go to university. Every year.
So with me in my old Toyota (itself just a year younger than my two passengers) were two young men, one already in possession of a degree from arguably one of the best universities in the world, the other yet to find out whether he would even get a shot at working toward a degree. One had already lived by himself, met people from around the world, done a semester at Oxford, worked in Africa. The other had never left his home country, hadn't even been to most parts of his own country except on the clock for someone else - he'd been to historic Polonnaruwa twice but never got the chance to see the ruins - which are right by the road for cryin' out loud! (I made sure he didn't make it a hat-trick with our own visit).
Why does Sri Lanka do this to her young people? Fine we're a conservative society, we have different expectations of how children relate to their parents, etc etc. But seeing the different vectors in life experience thus far and opportunity going forward in young men of the same age brought many issues right up in front of me.
Why am I writing this now? My golaya is soon leaving for university, to pursue his dream of a degree in Agriculture. He has a standing offer to come back to us whenever he wants. I have not met many who work harder or are more loyal, despite the many rough edges smoothed down and the much learning he has managed while he was with me.
Higher education is just about the only way people like him can blow the hinges off the gates. Sri Lanka needs more seats at universities, better universities, and overall more opportunities for more young people. Now. Private universities? Fine. Make them accessible, hold them accountable to the highest of standards, and make the old, inefficient and mostly inefficient state universities get off their backsides and give them a good fight. Please don't just let in the people with the fattest unmarked envelopes and the biggest promises. Look at Qatar. Look at Malaysia. Look at Singapore. Education is life-changing, and not too indirectly, country-changing. Be picky. These may be the the most important decisions we ever make.
If we fritter away the chances for the current generation, we will look back and see that we missed the last chance to turn this ship around.
They were both 21 years old. One, whose parents were from Nigeria, had been born in the U.S., gone to Stanford, and was now laying the ground for Ph.D. work. The other, born in a very rural part of Sri Lanka, had studied well enough to win a scholarship at 11 years to my Alma Mater, Royal College. He has lived with his aunt in Colombo longer than he has lived with his own parents, so he could come to school. He is the eldest of three children, but as with most young men that age, in many ways he was still a child himself.
How did I find him? The old network, of course - luckily for him at age 11 he plugged in to one of the best networks you could find in Sri Lanka, no hubris and no exaggeration there. I needed a good, able dogsbody able to take some of the killer workload par for the course with social entrepreneurship. My old Scout Master knew just the man, a Prefect who was very into agriculture, perfect as I'm working in agriculture myself.
So much into agriculture in fact, that he'd cheerfully crashed his Advanced Levels (entrance exam for state universities) the first time, then started what was supposed to be part-time job at a leading agribusiness conglomerate that worked him so hard he crashed his second shy, and was just finishing his third and last shot at possibly his only way to get a higher education, given his economic condition. Get the marks, get a shot at university. In any year only 8.5% of those who pass the exams, get a score high enough to actually gain a seat at a state university.
Eight and a half percent. That leaves around 185,000 young men and women who passed the university exam, unable to go to university. Every year.
So with me in my old Toyota (itself just a year younger than my two passengers) were two young men, one already in possession of a degree from arguably one of the best universities in the world, the other yet to find out whether he would even get a shot at working toward a degree. One had already lived by himself, met people from around the world, done a semester at Oxford, worked in Africa. The other had never left his home country, hadn't even been to most parts of his own country except on the clock for someone else - he'd been to historic Polonnaruwa twice but never got the chance to see the ruins - which are right by the road for cryin' out loud! (I made sure he didn't make it a hat-trick with our own visit).
Why does Sri Lanka do this to her young people? Fine we're a conservative society, we have different expectations of how children relate to their parents, etc etc. But seeing the different vectors in life experience thus far and opportunity going forward in young men of the same age brought many issues right up in front of me.
Why am I writing this now? My golaya is soon leaving for university, to pursue his dream of a degree in Agriculture. He has a standing offer to come back to us whenever he wants. I have not met many who work harder or are more loyal, despite the many rough edges smoothed down and the much learning he has managed while he was with me.
Higher education is just about the only way people like him can blow the hinges off the gates. Sri Lanka needs more seats at universities, better universities, and overall more opportunities for more young people. Now. Private universities? Fine. Make them accessible, hold them accountable to the highest of standards, and make the old, inefficient and mostly inefficient state universities get off their backsides and give them a good fight. Please don't just let in the people with the fattest unmarked envelopes and the biggest promises. Look at Qatar. Look at Malaysia. Look at Singapore. Education is life-changing, and not too indirectly, country-changing. Be picky. These may be the the most important decisions we ever make.
If we fritter away the chances for the current generation, we will look back and see that we missed the last chance to turn this ship around.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
...and since I didn't explain the "pine" part well enough...
I read earlier on the web, and I guess you could be fooled for a second if you didn't know much about them, that people thought screw-pine species' fruits looked like pine cones. Hence the "pine" part (apparently).
Monday, May 9, 2011
And that's why it's called the Screw Pine
We call it "rampe" (rum-pay) in Sinhala. Apparently it's called Pandan in South East Asian cultures. A researcher at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand (working under one of Rural Returns' advisors, Dr. Sarath Ilangaltileke) isolated the component that makes Jasmine rice aromatic, et voila, it turned out to be the exact compound found in rampe leaves. Sri Lankans have added a length of rampe to our rice for centuries. Now we know why exactly we did it - to enhance the aroma, particularly of the varieties that were less aromatic than our wonderful heirloom varieties. Don't believe me? Look up Chandrasekaran, B. et al, "A Textbook of Rice Science," 2007, Scientific Publishers India, p.293, section 13.3.5.
After much searching I finally found the missing link that led me to the English name, screw-pine. Didn't think much of it, didn't think it had anything to do with pines, nor did anything screwy about it come to mind immediately.
Thank goodness for the Kandyan Home Garden, and that people including my parents still preserve some vestiges even in crowded Colombo. Well, I gave the punchline away at the start, but there it is. And yes, the lower leaves have been cut away for cooking.
Gosh I love Sri Lanka :-)
Oh, and I need to some day scan in the sequence of photos I shot of polos (tender jak fruit) being cooked on the tree (can't get fresher - or slower - than that) in my great aunt's mother of all home gardens in Aluvihare. Now that's two whole different stories right there.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Re-cycling (pun intended) ain't new to us...
..and this I've seen around on Colombo's streets before; not sure if it's the same guy though. Love the idea - so much lateral thinking, some of it literally so. However, I can only imagine what happened to the internal circuitry and the CRT. We don't even have any kind of organized (and easy) battery disposal system, let alone for old electronics. I keep collecting my old batteries to take them to a Dialog customer center to drop in those tiny forgotten bins in a corner for old cellphones; not even sure if they're actually operated or followed in the Colombo Municipal Council's separation system - where all the carefully separated garbage got dumped in the same truck in front of the chagrined customers. Could be an idea for RR though. 'Cept we're supposed to be a rural organization....
Monday, March 14, 2011
Sri Lanka Reading List - part 1 (I hope)
I've been back in the U.S. for a few weeks and it's been great to reconnect with classmates and other friends, and I've been busily twisting arms and encouraging nascent plans to visit Sri Lanka sooner rather than later. Though I love painting word-pictures and treating myself as well as my friends to stories from home, I thought it would be a good idea to start a little list of recommended reading - books that I enjoyed and which have enough connection to Sri Lanka to give people a taste of what's to come. Remembering the books' highlights makes me want to bring forward my return date!
Life having been so busy for the last few years, I haven't been getting through many books, so I recruited my uncle Suren, who also studied in the U.S. (in the 80's) and as a pilot, gets a lot of downtime where he devours books (and yeah, he's the one Malcolm Gladwell mentions in Outliers). Other respected elders, you may be next for a list of books (I'm talking to you, Shaku Akki)
Diya Rakusa's contributions:
Life having been so busy for the last few years, I haven't been getting through many books, so I recruited my uncle Suren, who also studied in the U.S. (in the 80's) and as a pilot, gets a lot of downtime where he devours books (and yeah, he's the one Malcolm Gladwell mentions in Outliers). Other respected elders, you may be next for a list of books (I'm talking to you, Shaku Akki)
Diya Rakusa's contributions:
- Handbook for the Ceylon Traveller, a Studio Times publication (unfortunately not available in the U.S. last time I checked)
- Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
- Flower Boy by Karen Roberts
- An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and Divers other Englishmen ... There, and of the Author's Miraculous Escape by Robert Knox (give the guy a break, this was the 18th century)
Suren Ratwatte's contributions
(notes from Suren to Diya Rakusa: "Haven't read the last one yet" and "Not necessarily positive. Don't censor the reading lists!"):
- Reef by Romesh Gunasekera **
- The sweet and simple kind by Yasmine Gooneratne
- The Hamilton Case by Michelle De Kretser *
- A Disobedient Girl by Ru(wani) Freeman
Friday, October 8, 2010
Letter to the Editor of The Sunday Leader
Re: "Vegetable Crates May Increase Prices"
Madam,
Madam,
I write in relation to the article with the above title, published on the 3rd of October 2010. Some of the assertions quoted therein about the possible increase in prices appeared inflated and unscientific. I am in the process of putting together a basic comparative calculation to prove - or scientifically disprove - the benefits of using crates. This however is a spare-time activity and I have therefore been unable to complete the exercise ahead of the print deadlines for Sunday the 10th. I hope to be able to share something simple but indicative as soon as possible nevertheless.
In the meantime, the simplest counterfactual evidence I can point to is the fact that leading, profitable public and private companies such as CIC, Nidro etc, who are directly accountable to their shareholders, would never voluntarily use crates exclusively, as they do now, unless there is a clear overall profit advantage in doing so. My only reservation is that more short-term or closed-minded thinkers may not have the same ability to see the bigger, long-term picture that truly justifies switching to the use of crates, an action that should benefit every link in the chain between the farmer and the consumer. This is the local consumer's and the national economy's loss.
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